The French Language (1 Viewer)

[Trevor Wbm]

I could give you some past participles to think about, but the problem is that I'll never be sure you didn't look up on the internet to get the right answer. As teachers all of us 3 (my mum, my sister and I) we've had quite a few battles with grammar books and dictionnaries at reach of course. It's very difficicult to find the right answer at times AND explain the "why this and not that"!

My theory is boats and ships are feminine because it's often difficult to get them to do what you want them to, and the weather has a lot to do with that.

 

[yodeli]

I would love to come and meet you! I too am a teacher and love France

Soon I will live in Max fulltime. so if you're in France I should be able to meet you somewhere not too far from my actual place, as things are not going the way expected and planned.
I will say more in a few months when it's all behind me. Right now I don't feel like talking about it.
Good news though with Max , I took it today to the mecanic to change its injectors. Then to the dealer to check a few things in the habitation. Then mid-august, I will live in it for good!

 

[Jewellbags]

It’s because saigner takes avoir in the past tense, whereas couper, when reflexive, takes être. Avoir participles agree with a previous direct object, just to confuse you.

Ah that’s much clearer thanks ;-)

 

[Grasmere9]

Soon I will live in Max fulltime. so if you're in France I should be able to meet you somewhere not too far from my actual place, as things are not going the way expected and planned.
I will say more in a few months when it's all behind me. Right now I don't feel like talking about it.
Good news though with Max , I took it today to the mecanic to change its injectors. Then to the dealer to check a few things in the habitation. Then mid-august, I will live in it for good!

J'adorerais vous rencontrer et regarder Max !! Nous serons en France en août. Je ne peux pas attendre!!
J'aime beaucoup la France

 

[ChrisSue]

I'm quite often assumed to be a Belgian - not too sure how to take that .

That happened to me too after a 26 week course to improve my French I asked for a pitch on a campsite, in French, and the guy asked if I was Belgian. My teacher loved it when I told her

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[yodeli]

J'adorerais vous rencontrer et regarder Max !! Nous serons en France en août. Je ne peux pas attendre!!
J'aime beaucoup la France

En Août je serai chez moi jusqu'au 16... normalement! Ensuite je serai aux alentours car nous avons une cousinade les 20 et 21,. Après, direction Rambouillet pour voir Mathis mon petit-fils.
Ah... et moi... très cher, c'est "TU" ! Pas de "vous" !!!

 

[sedge]

Whoever it was that said they identified as a wardrobe, sent me into paroxysms of hysterical laughter so I could hardly breathe. This thread reminded me that I've had 'grammar probs' with every foreign language I've ever tried to get to grips with - although I did once know enough about grammar in my native tongue to pass my O levels in both English and French, since I could understand the rules for starters.

Re the gender of words I also remember my mate who I'd known since we were both aged 7 who opted to learn Spanish to O Level when I'd learned French (a choice we'd both had to make before starting at senior school when both aged 11) explaining to me that any new words which needed to be recognised in Spain all needed to have an official gender decided by an official government committee in Madrid hence things which were considered to most likely be just a passing fad and unlikely to be needed for ever so long all seemed to be allocated feminine gender, hence exactly why anything to do with computers was pretty automatically going to be female. Considering she was employed as head of IT in an English senior school at that time .....

What I did also love was a column in Private Eye every month entitled "Let's parler franglais" - which rather obviously, certainly didn't !

 

[DBK]

très cher

That threw me! "Very expensive"?

It needed Google Translate on the whole sentence to discover it means "dear".

But "mon cher" I would have understood.

 

[julianbryant]

Unless there’s a need for a formal letter, the need for accuracy is, in truth, minimal, and there’s Google Translate for that. Yet language teachers in the UK made accuracy rather than fluency the be all and end all: as a consequence, a generation found itself tongue-tied, and British people gained a reputation for language laziness. And I believe, now, that the Duolingo approach is counterproductive in being able to communicate. It reinforces the fact of being ‘wrong’
I know, or suspect, that I mangle the French language something awful. But, having been advised by a video not to worry, I’m much more confident with having a go. In truth, spoken French verb endings all sound alike or close enough; if you use an infinitive rather than past participle you’ll still be understood, and be a figure of mild amusement, that English person who speaks ropey French; but better than the English person who doesn’t try.
I spent winter evenings listening to YouTube videos: EasyFrench has young ladies interviewing people on the streets of Paris about certain subjects. As a result, I found phrases popped out of my mouth without having to think about it! Worrying about cases, gender and the rest gets in the way. They know you’re English (though if you speak in sentences they might assume you’re Dutch!), so don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!

 

[Jane And Rog]

I highly recommend the podcasts by Hugo, Inner French. He speaks slowly and clearly about interesting topics. I’ve never actually paid and signed up to his method, though I think maybe I should.

innerFrench – Learn French through topics that matter.

innerfrench.com

Available on Apple podcasts too.

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[yodeli]

That threw me! "Very expensive"?

It needed Google Translate on the whole sentence to discover it means "dear".

But "mon cher" I would have understood.

LOL! "Très cher" is to be taken in a funny way. Most of the time , and it's the case here, you say it with your little finger up, and it means you're being posh .
VOUS in French can be taken as a posh way to speak to someone, so when I say , for me it is "TU très cher", it's supposed to be my way to being posh : "For me (my) Dearest it will be TU" (Little finger up) .
Does it make sense?

 

[DBK]

LOL! "Très cher" is to be taken in a funny way. Most of the time , and it's the case here, you say it with your little finger up, and it means you're being posh .
VOUS in French can be taken as a posh way to speak to someone, so when I say , for me it is "TU très cher", it's supposed to be my way to being posh : "For me (my) Dearest it will be TU" (Little finger up) .
Does it make sense?

I think that is a case where you just have to learn the expression and remember what it means. For example "Ça te* dit" which I've recently come across means "Would you like" but I don't think you can work it out, "That your said" is the literal translation which doesn't make sense. But I'm sure we have lots of examples like this in English.

*. Edit: I originally wrote Ça ta dit.

 

[Rapides]

I think that is a case where you just have to learn the expression and remember what it means. For example "Ça ta dit" which I've recently come across means "Would you like" but I don't think you can work it out, "That your said" is the literal translation which doesn't make sense. But I'm sure we have lots of examples like this in English.

More likely ça te dit?

 

[DBK]

More likely ça te dit?

Yes, you're right - shows how I'm still learning!

 

[offagen]

My French master for 4 years at grammar school was a Yorkshireman. It took me three years working in Paris to get rid of the accent.

That reminds me of a friend's experience years ago. He was married to a Japanese girl and asked her to teach him Japanese, which she did. They later went to Japan to see her family. When her brothers greeted him he spoke to them in his newly learned Japanese. They fell about laughing, which confused him. He asked what he'd said wrong and one replied "David San, you say correct words but you sound like a WOMAN!" More roars of laughter.

It doesn't always pay to mimic the voices of others

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[yodeli]

"Ça te* dit"

Another one, similar : ça te branche?

 

[kev54]

With gender, I get very confused!

Why are fish le poisson masculine yet a certain type of fish (we have already established masculinity for fish in the French language) for example, la carpe, why is that feminine?

It’s not the gender of the thing - it’s the gender of the word ! Yup - I didn’t get it well enough either

 

[kev54]

75% of French words ending with an 'e' are feminine. They just are.

View attachment 910623

Yes! A friend of mine had a big fight with the Académie Française about that and they eventually admitted he was right. The other 25% ?… un vrai casse tête!

 

[DBK]

Another one, similar : ça te branche?

"Shall we do it" in English but impossible for me to work out from the French.

There is an English expression. "I am stumped" or "I'm stumped" meaning you have reached a dead end. I believe the origin of the phrase refers to a settler clearing land and not clearing the tree stumps but I guess you would struggle to work that out from a French perspective.

 

[Grasmere9]

En Août je serai chez moi jusqu'au 16... normalement! Ensuite je serai aux alentours car nous avons une cousinade les 20 et 21,. Après, direction Rambouillet pour voir Mathis mon petit-fils.
Ah... et moi... très cher, c'est "TU" ! Pas de "vous" !!!

Merci Yodeli!! Nous allons de Calais à Chenas près de Mâcon.
Tu! As oui bien sur...

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[Widge]

Ok let's play then ! Why on earth English language which doesn't do feminine and masculine says SHE for a ship (a thing!) and Mister Fly for a fly? Why fruit are sold singular , while if I don't mistake you are perfectly allowed to say I've bought bananas , and cherries? I know there are quite a few other similar silly billy things but I can't recall them right now.

Not just with gender we have mad things like, you have a cow or you can have several cows, but you have a sheep or several sheep, it is never sheeps

 

[Aly1]

I spent 18 months learning French on Duolingo. I went to France and the French people all pretended they didn’t know what I was saying

 

[yodeli]

"Shall we do it" in English but impossible for me to work out from the French.

There is an English expression. "I am stumped" or "I'm stumped" meaning you have reached a dead end. I believe the origin of the phrase refers to a settler clearing land and not clearing the tree stumps but I guess you would struggle to work that out from a French perspective.

No it's not the way I would translate it. First of all when you have an interrogation mark you should add in front if it's not written or said "Est-ce-que" ... Equivalent is : Does
Then ça = it
Then te = you
Then verb : plug in
It is: Does it plug you in? Meaning will you have willing/energy for that?

So full example gives

Avec les copains on voudrait (= nous voudrions) faire un match de foot pour récolter des fonds:
ça te dit / ça te branche?
Answer : Oh oui super , ça me dit vraiment/ça me branche vraiment!

Not just with gender we have mad things like, you have a cow or you can have several cows, but you have a sheep or several sheep, it is never sheeps

Yep I knew that one too . And also we take "Pâte" for a common word which includes all sorts of pasta spaghettis, nouilles, tagliatelles, coquillettes, étoiles... etc....but for us it is something you can count. So you always have it plural . Je mange des pâtes , and not singular as you do, taking pasta for some "material" like bread for example. So when you say "I eat pasta", for us it means , you have only one in your plate! LOL !!!
Exception : Lasagnes. You do cook THEM , so...plural, but this word "Lasagnes"isn't a part of pasta, even though we do know they are pasta. That said , it doesn't change much for you, as long as you remember to always use it plural

 

[gus-lopez]

Good news though with Max , I took it today to the mecanic to change its injectors.

Great to hear

 

[Widge]

No it's not the way I would translate it. First of all when you have an interrogation mark you should add in front if it's not written or said "Est-ce-que" ... Equivalent is : Does
Then ça = it
Then te = you
Then verb : plug in
It is: Does it plug you in? Meaning will you have willing/energy for that?

So full example gives

Avec les copains on voudrait (= nous voudrions) faire un match de foot pour récolter des fonds:
ça te dit / ça te branche?
Answer : Oh oui super , ça me dit vraiment/ça me branche vraiment!


Yep I knew that one too . And also we take "Pâte" for a common word which includes all sorts of pasta spaghettis, nouilles, tagliatelles, coquillettes, étoiles... etc....but for us it is something you can count. So you always have it plural . Je mange des pâtes , and not singular as you do, taking pasta for some "material" like bread for example. So when you say "I eat pasta", for us it means , you have only one in your plate! LOL !!!
Exception : Lasagnes. You do cook THEM , so...plural, but this word "Lasagnes"isn't a part of pasta, even though we do know they are pasta. That said , it doesn't change much for you, as long as you remember to always use it plural

It's like baguette, before I moved to France I thought it was just a long stick of bread, which of course it is, but baguette is just a descriptive word, which I soon learnt doing DIY, for example the aluminum strips to join kitchen worktops are baguettes, the plastic electrical trunking for surface mounting cables are baguettes, not to mention chopsticks and magic wands.

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